


Ways to Say Goodbye

by cirrus (themorninglark)



Series: rareprompts [8]
Category: Free!
Genre: Angst and Feels, Future Fic, Gen, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 16:38:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4399415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/cirrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"S-so, Mikoshiba-senpai… where did he go?" </p><p>"He was injured," says Momo, with the lightest of shrugs. "But he's gonna get better."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ways to Say Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [attemptsonwords](https://archiveofourown.org/users/attemptsonwords/gifts).



> For Sana, who asked for SouMomo angst. I tried.
> 
> Momo POV is pretty unfamiliar to me, it was fun to experiment with!

_**(gradually)** _

"Hmm?" asks Momo, distracted; it's an easy guise for him to put on, and it's only half a lie. He is a distractable person, and he _is_ distracted, by the water in his ears. Also, he is currently flopped over a bench, looking, upside-down, at a dark-haired first-year with huge, curious eyes. The world looks strange from this angle.

"Mikoshiba-senpai," says the inquisitive kouhai, "my brother used to swim in Tokyo - he raced Tokitsu High School a few times, and he said, he said he heard that _Yamazaki-san_ moved here - "

"Oh."

Momo flips himself upright, tips his head to his shoulder and tries to shake the water out.

"Yeah," he says. "That's right. _I_ swam in a relay with him, you know!"

"Ehhh, senpai, that's _amazing_!"

"I _am_ amazing," Momo preens.

"S-so, Mikoshiba-senpai… where did he go?"

"He was injured," says Momo, with the lightest of shrugs. "But he's gonna get better."

 

_**(in the mountains)** _

The humidity of mid-July wraps around him like a cloak, a stifling, velvet hush. Everything moves at half-speed.

It is Momo's favourite season, because summer is the best time to hunt for beetles. Here, there are mountains, and there are forests in those mountains.

A boy could get lost in those mountains.

Momo, who's grown up with dirt beneath his fingernails and the smell of dry heat on cracked bark, does not get lost. He's good at unearthing things that want to stay hidden.

A boy could get lost - in the shadows of the trees - beneath the dusky twilight, slipping away, forgotten -

Momo is not that boy.

But he can try to _find_ him, if he looks hard enough.

 

_**(32,000 feet over the sea)** _

This is how he makes a habit of pinning his hopes to thin air -

Not with a bang, not even with a whimper, but with a crinkle, barely heard - of limp, glossy pages beneath fingers, in the stillness of an airplane cabin.

Matsuoka Rin of Team Japan smiles up at Momo from a double-page spread.

Yamazaki Sousuke, not of Team Japan, does not.

He remembers Ai-senpai telling him, he'd heard, that Sousuke-senpai was going abroad to get his shoulder looked at by yet another specialist. Not so long ago, perhaps, he was in a plane just like this one.

 

_**(looking at the stars)** _

_Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?_

It's the oldest, cheesiest pick-up line in the book, and it flows easily off Momo's lips with a playful wink and a grin that seals the deal, because everyone _knows_ it is cheesy and funny and he gets a laugh and maybe a new friend out of it.

But sometimes the question is serious, and the thing is, when it is, he can't - like, _just_ \- _ask_ \- not like that, and anyway, he's not here -

_Did it hurt when you fell, from the orbit of the sun?_

_Did it hurt not to shine any more?_

_Did it hurt?_

 

_**(looking at the ground)** _

_it's okay - you'll get back up there someday -_

 

_**(accidentally)** _

In the spring of his final year, he sees the back of someone who looks an awful lot like him.

The back in question disappears out the door of Lawson's. Momo's left the fridge door open, staring, mouth agape, and it's only when his fingers start tingling from the cold and he sneezes that he remembers what he came for, grabs the closest packet of juice, slams the change on the counter and bolts out of the store, looking -

But he is gone, whoever he is, ghost or human or memory.

Momo pokes his straw into his juice box. Takes a sip. Thinks, _well_ , it couldn't have been _him_ anyway, why would he be in a _combini_ down the road from school, here, of all places? It's been so long.

 

_**(without realising it)** _

_"I swam, you know. Backstroke. They called me the Sea Otter of Japan. I went to Nationals, once, and swam with Matsuoka Rin."_

It's like a golden ticket, Rin's name; everyone wants to hear about him, and Momo feels just the slightest, smallest pinprick of shame, because it is true and not true; it is true that Matsuoka Rin was everything he's cracked up to be, it is not true that Matsuoka Rin was _everything_ , period.

But he is in his first year of university. He is young, and so is the night.

He's a distractable person, and he shakes it off. Easy. Dances to the beat, loses himself in strobe lights and a rhythm that pulses hard and fast, and -

 

_**(surprised on the dancefloor)** _

"Momo?"

He thinks, he must be hearing things.

"Hey. Momo."

And then the hand lands on his shoulder, and it's warm, there is a familiar weight about that steady palm that makes his heart pound, and he turns -

 _He_ is there, and he is wearing a jacket of white, and his eyes are the colour of seafoam under the blue light.

He is smiling.

 

_**(in conversation)** _

Something about him seems softer.

He was a _senpai_ of few words, back then, grown into a man of fewer. It's okay, because Momo is bubbling over, frenetic, with more than enough words for both of them. It's been _years_ , he complains, and Sousuke-senpai has been so out of touch, and Samezuka did _super great_ at the Nationals last year, and did he see Rin-senpai on TV the other day?

Sousuke sips his cola slowly, listens with that smile on his face.

He doesn't talk much about himself.

He says, yes, he saw Rin the other day. He saw Rin's races too, all of them. He has time, now, for TV.

And Momo's mind trips to catch up with his ears; thrums insistently - _wait waitwait_ \- he asks, blurts out, aren't you racing too, Sousuke-senpai, aren't you back in the pool -

_aren't you back among the stars_

 

_**(like in a dream)** _

The answer sounds like white noise, static and unreal.

Momo shakes his head.

No, and in the moment, tipsy with adrenaline and high on hope, he isn't sure if he's saying it out loud or merely thinking it.

No, and maybe it doesn't matter either way because this night is a passing dream, and he will wake up to find that this chance meeting in an East side Tokyo club had never happened, and somewhere out there is the Sousuke-senpai he believes in -

Not this Sousuke, quieter, not this Sousuke who says he's tried everything, and who's sitting in front of him now, and _smiling_ , because he's _okay_ with it, _god_ -

 

_**(guiltily)** _

Was it his fault, too?

Did he blow away that hazy picture of Sousuke, like dust on the wind, when he talked about Rin, and only Rin?

(Had he stopped believing himself?)

 

_**(for good)** _

Momo's always been the sort to throw all his eggs in one basket, and run, _run_ so fast he doesn't notice if the lashes of bamboo and rope come undone at the bottom, if they've been falling out, one by one, along the way.

He _wants_ to believe. It's all he has. It's all he's clung on to, all that's carried him this far, all that he is - flinging the whole heart of his belief at something bigger, miracles, the _unbreakable_ within all of us -

But perhaps, it was never fair to pin it all on one person. Even a person like this one.

And this is how he says goodbye, in the end, not with a dramatic gesture but a whisper, stirring so deep within him he can barely hear it. It says, _let go, let go_ , and he puts his glass down on the countertop and the ice cubes clink. Melt. One by one. Like their dreams of touching the sky.

 


End file.
